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When Chris Morrissey learned she couldn’t bring the woman she loved to live with her in the country of her birth, it set her on a decades-long path to help Canada become a country where any two people who love each other can be together and feel safe.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi drew boisterous crowds at temple stops in Vancouver and Surrey, accompanied by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other prominent Conservatives courting ethnic voters in advance of the October federal election. While supporters billed the official visit as a historic event that would strengthen ties between the two countries, little was said at the Metro events about the countries’ relationship or future trade agreements. At Vancouver’s Gurdwara Khalsa Diwan, the two prime ministers were ushered quickly inside the temple, where they were expected to go through the traditional siropa, where scarves are laid over their shoulders and they’re presented with ceremonial swords, and didn’t say a word to the media.

The vast gap between the size of federal government transfer payments to Quebec and to B.C. for immigrant integration services has widened significantly since a 2012 internal review suggested that the ever-increasing payments to Quebec weren’t sustainable, according to newly-released federal figures.

Is Prime Minister Stephen Harper Canada’s equivalent to Richard Nixon, that U.S. president who was eventually impeached for using state powers to punish critics of his government and policies? Whether or not you dismiss such a comparison as casual water cooler opinion, there are real grounds for a perception that Canada’s politicians can use government to silence critics, the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria warns after doing a study of recent federal tax audits.

No military mission is without its hazards but Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has consistently low-balled the danger in our role in Iraq, calling it a low-risk operation. That fiction is now impossible to sustain as the Conservatives prepare to extend the operation.

A Federal Court judge has struck down the government’s policy requiring women who wear a face covering for religious reasons to remove it while reciting the citizenship oath. In the ruling, released late last week, Justice Keith Boswell said the policy prohibiting the veils, introduced by then immigration minister Jason Kenney in 2011, violates the government’s own citizenship regulations, which state that citizenship judges must allow “the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization” while administering the oath.

The B.C. government did not properly account for the hundreds of millions of dollars transferred from Ottawa for immigrant and refugee settlement services and did not spend all the money on the people it was intended for, according to a 2013 internal federal document.

The number of foreign mothers giving birth in Vancouver and Richmond hospitals has quadrupled in the last five years. In the first nine months of 2014, 232 non-residents delivered babies at Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care hospitals, the majority in Richmond. This accounted for nearly six per cent of all births.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s latest foreign trip, first to Beijing for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, then to the G20 meeting in Australia, has been portrayed as a triumph due largely — but not exclusively — to one stunning moment. Harper’s brassy declaration to Vladimir Putin to “get out of Ukraine” while icily shaking the Russian leader’s hand has been described by his admirers as his “Churchill moment.”

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz angered many young job seekers last week by suggesting those still living in their parents’ basements should consider unpaid work. The good news is, they may not have to.

Real estate is making British Columbian families richer, according to Statistics Canada’s latest report on financial security, though that is not necessarily making them better off. British Columbia saw the median family net worth, which measures total assets minus total debts, rise 128 per cent between 1999 and 2012 to $344,000 from $150,700 13 years previously — the highest among provinces in Canada compared with the national average of 78 per cent to $243,800 from $137,000 over the same time period.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper won’t meet the Dalai Lama during his current visit to Canada. However, one of the Conservative MPs attending a low-profile meeting with Tibet’s spiritual leader in Vancouver Friday said that decision shouldn’t be viewed as a snub.

B.C.’s top labour leader has urged federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney to resist pressure from businesses to exempt mountain ski resorts like Whistler from tough rules for the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said Tuesday that businesses need to recruit more aggressively in Canada and pay higher wages.

OTTAWA — Whistler, Canada’s busiest and highest-profile ski resort by far, could be an unintended casualty of the Harper government’s crackdown on its Temporary Foreign Workers program, according to an “urgent” appeal issued this week. The resort is losing clients from around the world, and restaurants in Whistler Village are struggling to find staff to handle the coming seasonal rush, the Whistler Chamber of Commerce said in a letter to Employment Minister Jason Kenney that was provided Friday to The Vancouver Sun.

Tim Hortons has ended its relationship with a franchisee in Fernie and Blairmore, Alta. who was the target of an Employment Standards Branch investigation after a temporary foreign worker from the Philippines claimed he was denied overtime pay for years.

Kudos to the B.C. Egg Marketing Board for labelling Wednesday's made-for-media event in down-town Vancouver - the unveiling of a life-size fire truck made from, of all odd things, egg cartons - as an exercise in "eggonomics."